Search results for: speech act instruction

Authors: Stuart Noel

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In a streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents Blanche DuBois, a most complex and intriguing character who often uses prestige language to project the image of an upper-class speaker and to disguise her darker and complicated self. She embodies various fascinating and contrasting characteristics. Like New Orleans (the locale of the play), Blanche represents two opposing images. One image projects that of genteel, Southern charm and beauty, speaking formally and using prestige language and what some linguists refer to as “hypercorrection,” and the other image reveals that of a soiled, deteriorating façade, full of decadence and illusion. Williams said on more than one occasion that Blanche’s use of such language was a direct reflection of her personality and character (as a high school English teacher). Prestige language is an exaggeratedly elevated, pretentious, and oftentimes melodramatic form of one’s language incorporating superstandard or more standard speech than usual in order to project a highly authoritative individual identity. Speech styles carry personal identification meaning not only because they are closely associated with certain social classes but because they tend to be associated with certain conversational contexts. Features which may be considered to be “elaborated” in form (for example, full forms vs. contractions) tend to cluster together in speech registers/styles which are typically considered to be more formal and/or of higher social prestige, such as academic lectures and news broadcasts. Members of higher social classes have access to the elaborated registers which characterize formal writings and pre-planned speech events, such as lectures, while members of lower classes are relegated to using the more economical registers associated with casual, face-to-face conversational interaction, since they do not participate in as many planned speech events as upper-class speakers. Tennessee Williams’s work is characteristically concerned with the conflict between the illusions of an individual and the reality of his/her situation equated with a conflict between truth and beauty. An examination of Blanche DuBois reveals a recurring theme of art and decay and the use of prestige language to reveal artistry in language and to hide a deteriorating self. His graceful and poetic writing personifies her downfall and deterioration. Her loneliness and disappointment are the things so often strongly feared by the sensitive artists and heroes in the world. Hers is also a special and delicate human spirit that is often misunderstood and repressed by society. Blanche is afflicted with a psychic illness growing out of her inability to face the harshness of human existence. She is a sensitive, artistic, and beauty-haunted creature who is avoiding her own humanity while hiding behind her use of prestige language. And she embodies a partial projection of Williams himself.

Keywords: American drama, prestige language, Southern American literature, Tennessee Williams

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Authors: Yuliya E. Leshchenko, Tatyana S. Ostapenko

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Language variation is a widespread linguistic phenomenon which can affect different levels of a language system: phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, etc. It is obvious that the scope of possible standard alternations within a particular language is limited by a variety of its norms and regulations which set more or less clear boundaries for what is possible and what is not possible for the speakers. The possibility of lexical variation (alternate usage of lexical items within the same contexts) is based on the fact that the meanings of words are not clearly and rigidly defined in the consciousness of the speakers. Therefore, lexical variation is usually connected with unstable relationship between words and their referents: a case when a particular lexical item refers to different types of referents, or when a particular referent can be named by various lexical items. We assume that the scope of lexical variation in bilingual speech is generally wider than that observed in monolingual speech due to the fact that, besides ‘lexical item – referent’ relations it involves the possibility of cross-language variation of L1 and L2 lexical items. We use the term ‘cross-language variation’ to denote a case when two equivalent words of different languages are treated by a bilingual speaker as freely interchangeable within the common linguistic context. As distinct from code-switching which is traditionally defined as the conscious use of more than one language within one communicative act, in case of cross-language lexical variation the speaker does not perceive the alternate lexical items as belonging to different languages and, therefore, does not realize the change of language code. In the paper, the authors present research of lexical variation of adult Komi-Permyak – Russian bilingual speakers. The two languages co-exist on the territory of the Komi-Permyak District in Russia (Komi-Permyak as the ethnic language and Russian as the official state language), are usually acquired from birth in natural linguistic environment and, according to the data of sociolinguistic surveys, are both identified by the speakers as coordinate mother tongues. The experimental research demonstrated that alternation of Komi-Permyak and Russian words within one utterance/phrase is highly frequent both in speech perception and production. Moreover, our participants estimated cross-language word combinations like ‘маленькая /Russian/ нывка /Komi-Permyak/’ (‘a little girl’) or ‘мунны /Komi-Permyak/ домой /Russian/’ (‘go home’) as regular/habitual, containing no violation of any linguistic rules and being equally possible in speech as the equivalent intra-language word combinations (‘учöтик нывка’ /Komi-Permyak/ or ‘идти домой’ /Russian/). All the facts considered, we claim that constant concurrent use of the two languages results in the fact that a large number of their words tend to be intuitively interpreted by the speakers as lexical variants not only related to the same referent, but also referring to both languages or, more precisely, to none of them in particular. Consequently, we can suppose that bilingual mental lexicon includes an extensive ‘fused’ zone of lexical representations that provide the basis for cross-language variation in bilingual speech.

Keywords: bilingualism, bilingual mental lexicon, code-switching, lexical variation

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Authors: Derya Duran, Christine Jacknick

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This study explores post-task reflections in an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) setting, and it specifically focuses on how a teacher performs pedagogical practices such as reformulating, extending and evaluating following students’ spontaneous experience tellings in EMI classrooms. The data consist of 30 hours of video recordings from two EMI content classes, which were recorded for an academic term at a university in Turkey. The course, Guidance, is offered to fourth year undergraduate students as a compulsory course in the Department of Educational Sciences. The participants (n=78) study at the Faculty of Education, majoring in different educational departments (i.e., Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Elementary Education, Foreign Language Education). Using conversation analysis, we demonstrate that the teacher employs a variety of interactional resources to elicit (i.e., asking specific questions) and also provides (i.e., giving scientific information) as much content as possible, which also sheds light on the institutional fingerprints of the current research context. The study contributes to the existing research by unpacking articulation of personal experiences and cultivation of collaborativeness in classroom interaction. Moreover, describing the dialogic nature of these specific occasions, the study demonstrates how teacher and students address learning tasks together (collectivity), how they orient to each other turns interactionally (reciprocity), and how they keep the pedagogical focus in mind (purposefulness).

Keywords: conversation analysis, English as a medium of instruction, higher education, post-task reflections

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Authors: Uwaruile Austin Obuh

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This research work focuses on the use of computers in improving the academic performance of students in mathematics in Benin City, Edo State. To guide this study, two research questions were raised, and two corresponding hypotheses were formulated. A total of one hundred and twenty (120) respondents were randomly selected from four schools in the city (60 boys and 60 girls). The instrument employed for the collation of data for the study was the multiple-choice test items on geometry (MCTIOG), drawn from past senior school certificate examinations (SSCE) questions. The instrument was validated by an expert in mathematics and measurement and evaluation. The data obtained from the pre and post-test were analysed using the mean, standard deviation, and T-test. The study revealed a non-significant difference between the experimental and control group in the pre-test, and the two groups were found to be the same before treatment began. The study also revealed that the experimental group performed better than the control group. One can, therefore, conclude that the use of computers for mathematics instruction has improved the performance of students in Geometry. Therefore, the hypothesis was rejected. The study finally revealed that there was no significant difference between the boys and girls taught mathematics using a computer. Therefore, the hypothesis which states there will be no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls taught mathematics using the computer was not rejected. Consequent upon the findings of this study, a number of recommendations were postulated that would enhance the performance of teachers in the use of computer-aided instruction.

Keywords: computer, teaching, learning, mathematics

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Authors: John Lorenzo Bautista, Yoon-Joong Kim

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In this paper, a set of Filipino Phonetically Balanced Word list consisting of 250 words (PBW250) were constructed for a phoneme-level ASR system for the Filipino language. The Entropy Maximization is used to obtain phonological balance in the list. Entropy of phonemes in a word is maximized, providing an optimal balance in each word’s phonological distribution using the Add-Delete Method (PBW algorithm) and is compared to the modified PBW algorithm implemented in a dynamic algorithm approach to obtain optimization. The gained entropy score of 4.2791 and 4.2902 for the PBW and modified algorithm respectively. The PBW250 was recorded by 40 respondents, each with 2 sets data. Recordings from 30 respondents were trained to produce an acoustic model that were tested using recordings from 10 respondents using the HMM Toolkit (HTK). The results of test gave the maximum accuracy rate of 97.77% for a speaker dependent test and 89.36% for a speaker independent test.

Keywords: entropy maximization, Filipino language, Hidden Markov Model, phonetically balanced words, speech recognition

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Authors: Tholaine Matadi

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South Africa is a democratic country with a historical record of racially-motivated marginalisation and exclusion of the majority. During the apartheid era the country was run along pieces of legislation and policies based on racial segregation. The system held a tight clamp on interracial mixing which forced people to remain in segregated areas. For example, a citizen from the Indian community could not own property in an area allocated to white people. In this way, a great majority of people were denied basic human rights. Now, there is a supreme constitution with an entrenched justiciable Bill of Rights founded on democratic values of social justice, human dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. The Constitution also enshrines the values of non-racialism and non-sexism. The Constitutional Court has the power to declare unconstitutional any law or conduct considered to be inconsistent with it. Now, more than two decades down the line, despite the abolition of apartheid, there is evidence that South Africa still experiences hate crimes which violate the entrenched right of vulnerable groups not to be discriminated against on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender, national origin, occupation, or disability. To remedy this mischief parliament has responded by drafting the Prevention and Combatting of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill. The Bill has been disseminated for public comment and suggestions. It is intended to combat hate crimes and hate speech based on sheer prejudice. The other purpose of the Bill is to bring South Africa in line with international human rights instruments against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related expressions of intolerance identified in several international instruments. It is against this backdrop that this paper intends to analyse the impact of the Bill on the rights to human dignity, equality, and freedom. This study is significant because the Bill was highly contested and creates a huge debate. This study relies on a qualitative evaluative approach based on desktop and library research. The article recurs to primary and secondary sources. For comparative purpose, the paper compares South Africa with countries such as Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cuba, and United Kingdom which have criminalised hate crimes and hate speech. The finding from this study is that despite the Bill’s expressed positive intentions, this draft legislation is problematic for several reasons. The main reason is that it generates considerable controversy mostly because it is considered to infringe the right to freedom of expression. Though the author suggests that the Bill should not be rejected in its entirety, she notes the brutal psychological effect of hate crimes on their direct victims and the writer emphasises that a legislature can succeed to combat hate-crimes only if it provides for them as a separate stand-alone category of offences. In view of these findings, the study recommended that since hate speech clauses have a negative impact on freedom of expression it can be promulgated, subject to the legislature enacting the Prevention and Combatting of Hate-Crimes Bill as a stand-alone law which criminalises hate crimes.

Keywords: freedom of expression, hate crimes, hate speech, human dignity

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Authors: Alexandra-Monica Toma

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Internet memes are an element of computer mediated communication and an important part of online culture that combines text and image in order to generate meaning. This term coined by Richard Dawkings refers to more than a mere way to briefly communicate ideas or emotions, thus naming a complex and an intensely perpetuated phenomenon in the virtual environment. This paper approaches memes as a cultural artefact and a virtual trope that mirrors societal concerns and issues, and analyses the pragmatics of their use. Memes have to be analysed in series, usually relating to some image macros, which is proof of the interplay between imitation and creativity in the memes’ writing process. We believe that their potential to become viral relates to three key elements: adaptation to context, reference to a successful meme series, and humour (jokes, irony, sarcasm), with various pragmatic functions. The study also uses the concept of multimodality and stresses how the memes’ text interacts with the image, discussing three types of relations: symmetry, amplification, and contradiction. Moreover, the paper proves that memes could be employed as speech acts with illocutionary force, when the interaction between text and image is enriched through the connection to a specific situation. The features mentioned above are analysed in a corpus that consists of memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This corpus shows them to be highly adaptable to context, which helps build the feeling of connection and belonging in an otherwise tremendously fragmented world. Some of them are created based on well-known image macros, and their humour results from an intricate dialogue between texts and contexts. Memes created in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered speech acts and are often used as such, as proven in the paper. Consequently, this paper tackles the key features of memes, makes a thorough analysis of the memes sociocultural, linguistic, and situational context, and emphasizes their intertextuality, with special accent on their illocutionary potential.

Keywords: context, memes, multimodality, speech acts

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Authors: Doaa Saad, Igor Verner, Rinat B. Rosenberg-Kima

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This case study demonstrates how the Task-Centered Instructional Strategy can be used to develop robotics competencies in middle-school science teachers without programming knowledge, thereby reducing their anxiety about robotics. Sixteen middle school science teachers participated in a teachers’ professional development program. The strategy combines the progression of real-world tasks with explicit instruction that serves as the backbone of instruction. The designed progression includes three tasks that integrate building and programming robots, pedagogy, and science knowledge, with an increasing level of complexity and decreasing level of support. We used EV3 LEGO kits and programming blocks, a new technology for most of the participating teachers. Pre-post questionnaires were used to examine teachers’ anxiety in performing robotics tasks before the program began and after the program ended. In addition, post-program questionnaires were used to obtain teachers’ feedback on the program’s overall quality. The case study results showed that teachers were less anxious about performing robotics tasks after the program and were highly satisfied with the professional development program. Overall, our research findings indicate a positive effect of the Task-Centered Instructional Strategy for preparing in-service science teachers to integrate robotics activities into their science classes.

Keywords: competencies, educational robotics, task-centered instructional strategy, teachers’ professional development

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Authors: Muzaffar Hussain

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Requests strategies are considered as a part of the speech acts, which are frequently used in everyday communication. Each language provides speech acts to the speakers; therefore, the selection of appropriate form seems more culture-specific rather than language. The present paper investigates the gender-based difference in the use of request strategies by native speakers of Urdu/Punjabi male and female who are learning English as a second language. The data for the present study were collected from 68 graduate students, who are learning English as an L2 in Pakistan. They were given an online close-ended questionnaire, based on Discourse Completion Test (DCT). After analyzing the data, it was found that the L1 male Urdu/Punjabi speakers were inclined to use more direct request strategies while the female Urdu/Punjabi speakers used indirect request strategies. This paper also found that in some situations female participants used more direct strategies than male participants. The present study concludes that the use of request strategies is influenced by culture, social status, and power distribution in a society.

Keywords: gender variation, request strategies, face-threatening, second language pragmatics, language competence

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Authors: Rehab Abdullah Shendi

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The use of customised soft-core processors in which instructions can be integrated into a system in application hardware is increasing in the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) field. Specifically, the partial run-time reconfiguration of FPGAs in specialised processors for a particular domain can be very beneficial. In this report, the design and implementation for the customisation of a soft-core MIPS processor using an FPGA and partial reconfiguration (PR) of FPGA technology will be addressed to achieve efficient resource use. This can be achieved using a PR design flow that helps the design fit into a smaller device. Moreover, the impact of static power consumption could be reduced due to runtime reconfiguration. This will be done by configurable custom instructions implemented in the hardware as an extension on the MIPS CPU. The aim of this project is to investigate the PR of FPGAs for run-time adaptations of the instruction set of a soft-core CPU, including the integration of custom instructions and the exploration of the potential to use the MultiBoot feature available in Xilinx FPGAs to carry out the PR process. The system will be evaluated and tested on a Nexus 3 development board featuring a Xilinx Spartran-6 FPGA. The system will be able to load reconfigurable custom instructions dynamically into user programs with the help of the trap handler when the custom instruction is called by the MIPS CPU. The results of this experiment demonstrate that custom instructions in hardware can speed up a certain function and many instructions can be saved when compared to a software implementation of the same function. Implementing custom instructions in hardware is perfectly possible and worth exploring.

Keywords: customisation, FPGA, MIPS, partial reconfiguration, PR

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Authors: Rahul Mohite, Lahcen Ouarbya

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This paper focuses on the interplay between humans and computer systems and the ability of these systems to understand and respond to human emotions, including non-verbal communication. Current emotion recognition systems are based solely on either facial or verbal expressions. The limitation of these systems is that it requires large training data sets. The paper proposes a system for recognizing human emotions that combines both speech and emotion recognition. The system utilizes advanced techniques such as deep learning and image recognition to identify facial expressions and comprehend emotions. The results show that the proposed system, based on the combination of facial expression and speech, outperforms existing ones, which are based solely either on facial or verbal expressions. The proposed system detects human emotion with an accuracy of 86%, whereas the existing systems have an accuracy of 70% using verbal expression only and 76% using facial expression only. In this paper, the increasing significance and demand for facial recognition technology in emotion recognition are also discussed.

Keywords: facial reputation, expression reputation, deep gaining knowledge of, photo reputation, facial technology, sign processing, photo type

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Authors: Hana Maresova, Daniel Ecler

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The paper focuses on the use of 3D multi-user virtual environments (MUVE) in language teaching and presents the results of four years of research at the Faculty of Education, Palacký University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). In the form of an experiment, mother tongue language teaching in the 3D virtual worlds Second Life and Kitely (experimental group) and parallel traditional teaching on identical topics representing teacher's interpretation using a textbook (control group) were implemented. The didactic test, which was presented to the experimental and control groups in an identical form before and after the instruction, verified the effect of the instruction in the experimental group by comparing the results obtained by both groups. Within the three components of mother-tongue teaching (vocabulary, literature, style and communication education), the students in the literature group achieved partially better results (statistically significant in the case of items devoted to the area of visualization of the learning topic), while in the case of grammar and style education the respondents of the control group achieved better results. On the basis of the results obtained, we can conclude that the most appropriate use of MUVE can be seen in the teaching of those topics that provide the possibility of dramatization, experiential learning and group involvement and cooperation, on the contrary, with regard to the need to divide students attention between the topic taught and the control of avatar and movement in virtual reality as less suitable for teaching in the area of memorization of the topic or concepts.

Keywords: distance learning, 3D virtual environments, online teaching, language teaching

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Authors: Sora Suh, Catherine Michener

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This paper examines the collaborative forms of advocacy that a group of four public school teachers took for their emergent bilingual students in one public school district. While teacher advocacy takes many forms in and out of the classroom, much advocacy work is done by individuals and less by collective action. As a result, individual teachers risk isolation or marginalization in their school contexts when they advocate for immigrant youth. This paper is intended to contribute to the documentation and understanding of teachers’ advocacy work as a collaborative act in teacher education research. The increase of ELs in US classrooms and a corresponding lack of teacher preparation to meet the needs of ELs has motivated the training of educators in linguistically responsive education (e.g., ESL, sheltered English instruction [SEI], bilingual education). Drawing from educational theories of linguistically responsive teaching for preparing educators, we trace the linguistically responsive advocacy work of the teachers. The paper is a multiple case study that tracks how teachers’ discussions on advocacy during a teacher preparation program leading to collaborative actions in their daily teaching lives in and out of school. Data collected includes online discussion forums on the topic of advocacy, course assignments on the topic of advocacy, video-audio recordings of classroom teaching observations, and video-audio recordings of individual and focus group interviews. The findings demonstrate that the teachers’ understanding of advocacy developed through collaborative partnerships formed in the teacher preparation program and grew into active forms of collaborative advocacy in their teaching practice in and out of school. The teachers formed multi-level and collaborative partnerships with teachers, families, community members, policymakers from the local government, and educational researchers to advocate for their emergent bilingual students by planning advocacy events such as new family orientations for emergent bilinguals, professional development for general education teachers on the topic of linguistically responsive instruction, and family nights hosted by the district. The paper’s findings present types of advocacy work in which teachers engage (pedagogical, curricular, out-of-school work) and provide evidence of collaborative advocacy work by a group of engaged educators. The paper highlights the increased agency and effective advocacy of teachers through teacher education and collaborative partnerships and suggests a need for more research on collaborative forms of teacher advocacy for emergent bilinguals.

Keywords: language education, teacher advocacy, language instruction, teacher education

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Authors: Eyibo Ebengeobong Eddie, Halil Zafer Alibaba

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The neglect of classroom acoustics is dominant in most educational facilities, meanwhile, hearing and listening is the learning process in this kind of facilities. A classroom should therefore be an environment that encourages listening, without an obstacles to understanding what is being taught. Although different studies have shown teachers to complain that noise is the everyday factor that causes stress in classroom, the capacity of individuals to understand speech is further affected by Echoes, Reverberation, and room modes. It is therefore necessary for classrooms to have an ideal acoustics to aid the intelligibility of students in the learning process. The influence of these acoustical parameters on learning and teaching in schools needs to be further researched upon to enhance the teaching and learning capacity of both teacher and student. For this reason, there is a strong need to provide and collect data to analyse and define the suitable quality of classrooms needed for a learning environment. Research has shown that acoustical problems are still experienced in both newer and older schools. However, recently, principle of acoustics has been analysed and room acoustics can now be measured with various technologies and sound systems to improve and solve the problem of acoustics in classrooms. These acoustic solutions, materials, construction methods and integration processes would be discussed in this paper.

Keywords: classroom, acoustics, materials, integration, speech intelligibility

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Authors: Rui Wang, Luodi Yu, Dan Huang, Hsuan-Chih Chen, Yang Zhang, Suiping Wang

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Enhanced discrimination of pure tones but diminished discrimination of speech pitch (i.e., lexical tone) were found in children with autism who speak a tonal language (Mandarin), suggesting a speech-specific impairment of pitch perception in these children. However, in tonal languages, both lexical tone and vowel are phonemic cues and integrally dependent on each other. Therefore, it is unclear whether the presence of phonemic vowel dimension contributes to the observed lexical tone deficits in Mandarin-speaking children with autism. The current study employed a multi-feature oddball paradigm to examine how vowel and tone dimensions contribute to the neural responses for syllable change detection and involuntary attentional orienting in school-age Mandarin-speaking children with autism. In the oddball sequence, syllable /da1/ served as the standard stimulus. There were three deviant stimulus conditions, representing tone-only change (TO, /da4/), vowel-only change (VO, /du1/), and change of tone and vowel simultaneously (TV, /du4/). EEG data were collected from 25 children with autism and 20 age-matched normal controls during passive listening to the stimulation. For each deviant condition, difference waveform measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) was derived from subtracting the ERP waveform to the standard sound from that to the deviant sound for each participant. Additionally, the linear summation of TO and VO difference waveforms was compared to the TV difference waveform, to examine whether neural sensitivity for TV change detection reflects simple summation or nonlinear integration of the two individual dimensions. The MMN results showed that the autism group had smaller amplitude compared with the control group in the TO and VO conditions, suggesting impaired discriminative sensitivity for both dimensions. In the control group, amplitude of the TV difference waveform approximated the linear summation of the TO and VO waveforms only in the early time window but not in the late window, suggesting a time course from dimensional summation to nonlinear integration. In the autism group, however, the nonlinear TV integration was already present in the early window. These findings suggest that speech perception atypicality in children with autism rests not only in the processing of single phonemic dimensions, but also in the dimensional integration process.

Keywords: autism, event-related potentials , mismatch negativity, speech perception

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Authors: Sara J. Mills, Sally Howell

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The field of special education has long struggled to bridge the research to practice gap. There is ample evidence from research of effective strategies for students with special needs, but these strategies are not routinely implemented in schools in ways that yield positive results for students. In recent years, the field of special education has turned its focus to implementation science. That is, discovering effective methods of implementing evidence-based practices in school settings. Teacher training is a critical factor in implementation. This study aimed to successfully implement Schema-Based Instruction (SBI) for math problem solving in four classrooms in a special primary school serving students with language deficits, including students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Intellectual Disabilities (ID). Using an action research design that allowed for adjustments and modification to be made over the year-long study, two cohorts of teachers across the school were trained and supported in six-week learning cycles to implement SBI in their classrooms. The learning cycles included a one-day training followed by six weeks of one-on-one or team coaching and three fortnightly cohort group meetings. After the first cohort of teachers completed the learning cycle, modifications and adjustments were made to lesson materials in an attempt to improve their effectiveness with the second cohort. Fourteen teachers participated in the study, including master special educators (n=3), special education instructors (n=5), and classroom assistants (n=6). Thirty-one students participated in the study (21 boys and 10 girls), ranging in age from 5 to 12 years (M = 9 years). Twenty-one students had a diagnosis of ASD, 20 had a diagnosis of mild or moderate ID, with 13 of these students having both ASD and ID. The remaining students had diagnosed language disorders. To evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation approach, both student and teacher data was collected. Student data included pre- and post-tests of math word problem solving. Teacher data included fidelity of treatment checklists and pre-post surveys of teacher attitudes and efficacy for teaching problem solving. Finally, artifacts were collected throughout the learning cycle. Results from cohort 1 and cohort 2 revealed similar outcomes. Students improved in the number of word problems they answered correctly and in the number of problem-solving steps completed independently. Fidelity of treatment data showed that teachers implemented SBI with acceptable levels of fidelity (M = 86%). Teachers also reported increases in the amount of time spent teaching problem solving, their confidence in teaching problem solving and their perception of students’ ability to solve math word problems. The artifacts collected during instruction indicated that teachers made modifications to allow their students to access the materials and to show what they knew. These findings are in line with research that shows student learning can improve when teacher professional development is provided over an extended period of time, actively involves teachers, and utilizes a variety of learning methods in classroom contexts. Further research is needed to evaluate whether these gains in teacher instruction and student achievement can be maintained over time once the professional development is completed.

Keywords: implementation science, mathematics problem solving, research-to-practice gap, schema based instruction

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Authors: Amin Kaveh Boukani

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Foreign language learning is not straightforward and can be affected by numerous factors, among which personality features like tolerance of ambiguity (TA) are so well-known and important. Such characteristics yet can be affected by other factors like learning additional languages. The current investigation, thus, opted to explore the possible effect of linguistic background (being bilingual or trilingual) on the tolerance of ambiguity (TA) of Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, the possible mediating effect of TA on multilingual learners' language performance (listening comprehension in this study) was expounded. This research involved 68 EFL learners (32 bilinguals, 29 trilinguals) with the age range of 19-29 doing their degrees in the Department of English Language and Literature of Urmia University. A set of questionnaires, including tolerance of ambiguity (Herman et. al., 2010) and linguistic background information (Modirkhameneh, 2005), as well as the IELTS listening comprehension test, were used for data collection purposes. The results of a set of independent samples t-test and mediation analysis (Hayes, 2022) showed that (1) linguistic background (being bilingual or trilingual) had a significant direct effect on EFL learners' TA, (2) Linguistic background had a significant direct influence on listening comprehension, (3) TA had a substantial direct influence on listening comprehension, and (4) TA moderated the influence of linguistic background on listening comprehension considerably. These results suggest that multilingualism may be considered as an advantageous asset for EFL learners and should be a prioritized characteristic in EFL instruction in multilingual contexts. Further pedagogical implications and suggestions for research are proposed in light of effective EFL instruction in multilingual contexts.

Keywords: tolerance of ambiguity, listening comprehension, multilingualism, bilingual, trilingual

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Authors: Sophie Laurence, Catherine Rivard

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The assessment of acquired language disorders in the adult population, whether for a bilingual or monolingual adult, is a complex process that requires the speech-language pathologist (SLP) to make a judicious choice when selecting the assessment method and tools. However, this task is even more complex with Ontario's bilingual population due to the lack of linguistically and culturally appropriate tools for this population. Numerous researches examined language assessment of the pediatric bilingual population; however, few studies have focused on assessing acquired language disorders in bilingual adults. This study's main objective is to identify the challenges that SLPs encounter when assessing language in the bilingual English-French adult population in Ontario to ultimately be able to serve this population in the future better. An online questionnaire was made available to 1325 members of the College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario (CASLPO) who work with the adult population. The answers to this questionnaire (n = 71) allowed us to identify the tools and strategies most commonly used by SLPs in current practice, identify the assessment challenges faced by SLPs, and determine the causes of these challenges as well as potential solutions. In an English and French assessment, the Western Aphasia Battery, the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and the Boston Naming Test were the three tools that respondents deemed to be the most relevant for the assessment. Besides, the results revealed that limited access to SLPs and interpreters who speak the client's language and the lack of standardized and normalized assessment tools for Ontario's French-speaking and bilingual English-French clientele are at the heart of the challenges of current SLP practice. Consistent with these findings, respondents highlighted two potential solutions to address these challenges: SLPs have access to standardized/normalized tools for the population under study and better access to SLPs and interpreters who speak the client's language.

Keywords: assessment, acquired language disorders, bilingualism, speech-Language pathology, adult population

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Authors: Hsi Wei

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Does the language we speak affect the way we think? This question has been discussed for a long time from different aspects. In this article, the issue is examined with an experiment on how speakers of different languages tend to do different sequencing when it comes to the size of general objects. An essential difference between the usage of English and Mandarin is the way we sequence the size of places or objects. In English, when describing the location of something we may say, for example, ‘The pen is inside the trashcan next to the tree at the park.’ In Mandarin, however, we would say, ‘The pen is at the park next to the tree inside the trashcan.’ It’s clear that generally English use the sequence of small to big while Mandarin the opposite. Therefore, the experiment was conducted to test if the difference of the languages affects the speakers’ ability to do the different sequencing. There were two groups of subjects; one consisted of English native speakers, another of Mandarin native speakers. Within the experiment, three nouns were showed as a group to the subjects as their native languages. Before they saw the nouns, they would first get an instruction of ‘big to small’, ‘small to big’, or ‘repeat’. Therefore, the subjects had to sequence the following group of nouns as the instruction they get or simply repeat the nouns. After completing every sequencing and repetition in their minds, they pushed a button as reaction. The repetition design was to gather the mere reading time of the person. As the result of the experiment showed, English native speakers reacted more quickly to the sequencing of ‘small to big’; on the other hand, Mandarin native speakers reacted more quickly to the sequence ‘big to small’. To conclude, this study may be of importance as a support for linguistic relativism that the language we speak do shape the way we think.

Keywords: language, linguistic relativism, size, sequencing

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Authors: K. M. Saif Ur Rahman, Razib Mamun, Himica Arjuman, Fida Al Shams

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Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has become an emerging neurodevelopmental disorder with increasing prevalence. It has become an important public health issue globally. Many approaches including speech and language therapy (SLT), occupational therapy, behavioral therapy etc. are being applied for the betterment of the ASD patients. This study aims to describe the characteristics of ASD patients and perception of caregiver regarding SLT in Bangladesh. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a therapy and rehabilitation center at Dhaka city. Caregivers of 48 ASD patients responded regarding their perception of SLT and characteristics of patients. Results: Among 48 ASD patients, 56.3% were between 3 to 5 years age group with a male predominance (87.5%). More than half of the participants (56.3%) initiated SLT at the age of 1-3 years and the majority (43.8%) were taking SLT for less than 1 year. Majority of the patients (64.6%) were taken to a physician for healthcare as a first contact of which 29.2% were referred to SLT by physicians. More than half (56.3%) of the caregivers were moderately satisfied with SLT and most of them (62.5%) mentioned moderate improvement through SLT. Improvement rate was 10-15% in specific symptoms such as eye contact, complex mannerism, pointing, imitation etc. Conclusion: This study reveals the self-reported perception of caregivers on SLT. Despite reported improvements, more exploration of different approaches and intervention for management of ASD is recommended.

Keywords: ASD, characteristics, SLT, Bangladesh

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Authors: Surasak Khamkhong

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This study aimed to investigate the use of the PISA reading literacy assessment framework (PRF) to improve EFL learners’ critical reading and thinking skills. The sample group, selected by the purposive sampling technique, included 36 EFL learners from a university in Northeastern Thailand. The instruments consisted of 8 PRF-based reading lessons, a 27-item-PRF-based reading test which was used as a pre-test and a post-test, and an attitude questionnaire toward the designed lessons. The statistics used for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The results revealed that before the intervention, the students’ English reading proficiency were low as is evident from their low pre-test scores (M=14.00). They did fairly well for the access-and-retrieve questions (M=6.11), but poorly for the integrate-and-interpret questions (M=4.89) and the reflect-and-evaluate questions (M=3.00), respectively. This means that the students could comprehend the texts but they could hardly interpret or evaluate them. However, after the intervention, they could do better as their post-test scores were higher (M=18.01). They could comprehend (M=6.78), interpret (M=6.00) and evaluate (M=5.25) well. This means that after the intervention, their critical reading skills had improved. In terms of their attitude towards the designed lessons and instruction, most students were satisfied with the lessons and the instruction. It may thus be concluded that the designed lessons can help improve students’ English critical reading proficiency and may be used as a teaching model for improving EFL learners’ critical reading skills.

Keywords: second language reading, critical reading and thinking skills, PISA reading literacy framework, English L2 reading development

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Authors: Jocelyn L. Alimondo, Juna O. Sabelo

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This study explored the MTB-MLE implementation practices of teachers in one monolingual elementary school and one multilingual elementary school in Benguet, Philippines. It used phenomenological approach employing participant-observation, focus group discussion and individual interview. Data were gathered using a video camera, an audio recorder, and an FGD guide and were treated through triangulation and coding. From the data collected, varied ways in implementing the MTB-MLE program were noted. These are: Teaching using a hybrid first language, teaching using a foreign LOI, using translation and multilingual instruction, and using L2/L3 to unlock L1. However, these practices come with challenges such as the a conflict between the mandated LOI and what pupils need, lack of proficiency of teachers in the mandated LOI, facing unreceptive parents, stagnation of knowledge resulting from over-familiarity of input, and zero learning resulting from an incomprehensible language input. From the practices and challenges experienced by the teachers, a model of MTB-MLE approach, the 3L-in-one approach, to teaching was created to illustrate the practice which teachers claimed to be the best way to address the challenges besetting them while at the same time satisfying the academic needs of their pupils. From the findings, this paper concludes that despite the challenges besetting the teachers, they still displayed creativity in coming up with relevant teaching practices, the unreceptiveness of some teachers and parents sprung from the fact that they do not understand the real concept of MTB-MLE, greater challenges are being faced by teachers in multilingual school due to the diverse linguistic background of their clients, and the most effective approach in implementing MTB-MLE is the multilingual approach, allowing the use of the pupils’ mother tongue, L2 (Filipino), L3 (English), and other languages familiar to the students.

Keywords: MTB-MLE Philippines, MTB-MLE model, first language, multilingual instruction

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Authors: Negar Riazifar, Nigel G. Stocks

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This paper proposes strategies in level crossing (LC) sampling and reconstruction that provide high fidelity signal reconstruction for speech signals; these strategies circumvent the problem of exponentially increasing number of samples as the bit-depth is increased and hence are highly efficient. Specifically, the results indicate that the distribution of the intervals between samples is one of the key factors in the quality of signal reconstruction; including samples with short intervals do not improve the accuracy of the signal reconstruction, whilst samples with large intervals lead to numerical instability. The proposed sampling method, termed reduced conventional level crossing (RCLC) sampling, exploits redundancy between samples to improve the efficiency of the sampling without compromising performance. A reconstruction technique is also proposed that enhances the numerical stability through linear interpolation of samples separated by large intervals. Interpolation is demonstrated to improve the accuracy of the signal reconstruction in addition to the numerical stability. We further demonstrate that the RCLC and interpolation methods can give useful levels of signal recovery even if the average sampling rate is less than the Nyquist rate.

Keywords: level crossing sampling, numerical stability, speech processing, trigonometric polynomial

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Authors: Lubna Alhinti, Heidi Christensen, Stuart Cunningham

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People with speech disorders may rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies to help them communicate. However, the limitations of the current AAC technologies act as barriers to the optimal use of these technologies in daily communication settings. The ability to communicate effectively relies on a number of factors that are not limited to the intelligibility of the spoken words. In fact, non-verbal cues play a critical role in the correct comprehension of messages and having to rely on verbal communication only, as is the case with current AAC technology, may contribute to problems in communication. This is especially true for people’s ability to express their feelings and emotions, which are communicated to a large part through non-verbal cues. This paper focuses on understanding more about the non-verbal communication ability of people with dysarthria, with the overarching aim of this research being to improve AAC technology by allowing people with dysarthria to better communicate emotions. Preliminary survey results are presented that gives an understanding of how people with dysarthria convey emotions, what emotions that are important for them to get across, what emotions that are difficult for them to convey, and whether there is a difference in communicating emotions when speaking to familiar versus unfamiliar people.

Keywords: alternative and augmentative communication technology, dysarthria, speech emotion recognition, VIVOCA

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Authors: Mawande Dlali

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This paper examines the request strategies in commuter discourse involving taxi drivers and passengers in Khayelitsha as well as the responses to these requests. The present study considers requests in commuter transport as face threatening acts (FTAs), hence the need for the commuter crew to strategically shape their communicative actions to achieve their overall discourse goal of getting passengers to perform actions that are in their own interest with minimum resistance or confrontation. The crew presents itself by using communicative devices that prompt the passengers to evaluate it positively as warm, friendly, and respectful. However, the passengers' responses to requests range from compliance to resistance depending on their interpretation of the speaker’s motive and the probable social consequences. Participant observation by the researcher was the main method of collecting examples of requests and responses to the requests. Unstructured interviews and informal discussions were made with randomly selected taxi drivers and commuters. The findings and explanations presented in this article revealed the predominance of polite requests as speech acts in taxi discourse in Khayelitsha. This research makes a contribution to the contemporary pragmatics study of African languages in urban context.

Keywords: face threatening acts, speech acts, request strategies, discourse

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Authors: Diana González, Marta Gràcia, Ana Luisa Adam-Alcocer

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Incorporating digital tools into educational practices represents a valuable approach for enriching the quality of teachers' educational practices in oral competence and fostering improvements in student learning outcomes. This study aims to promote a collaborative and culturally sensitive approach to professional development between teachers and a speech therapist to enhance their self-awareness and reflection on high-quality educational practices that integrate school components to strengthen children’s oral communication and pragmatic skills. The study involved five bilingual teachers fluent in both English and Spanish, with three specializing in special education and two in general education. It focused on Spanish-English bilingual students, aged 3-6, who were experiencing speech delays or disorders in a New York City public school, with the collaboration of a speech therapist. Using EVALOE-DSS (Assessment Scale of Oral Language Teaching in the School Context - Decision Support System), teachers conducted self-assessments of their teaching practices, reflect and make-decisions throughout six classes from March to June, focusing on students' communicative competence across various activities. Concurrently, the speech therapist observed and evaluated six classes per teacher using EVALOE-DSS during the same period. Additionally, professional development meetings were held monthly between the speech therapist and teachers, centering on discussing classroom interactions, instructional strategies, and the progress of both teachers and students in their classes. Findings highlight the digital tool EVALOE-DSS's value in analyzing communication patterns and trends among bilingual children in inclusive settings. It helps in identifying improvement areas through teacher and speech therapist collaboration. After self-reflection meetings, teachers demonstrated increased awareness of student needs in oral language and pragmatic skills. They also exhibited enhanced utilization of strategies outlined in EVALOE-DSS, such as actively guiding and orienting students during oral language activities, promoting student-initiated communicative interactions, teaching students how to seek and provide information, and managing turn-taking to ensure inclusive participation. Teachers participating in the professional development program have shown positive progress in assessing their classes across all dimensions of the training tool, including instructional design, teacher conversation management, pupil conversation management, communicative functions, teacher strategies, and pupil communication functions. This includes aspects related to both teacher actions and child actions, particularly in child language development. This progress underscores the effectiveness of individual reflection (conducted weekly or biweekly using EVALOE-DSS) as well as collaborative reflection among teachers and the speech therapist during meetings. The EVALOE-SSD has proven effective in supporting teachers' self-reflection, decision-making, and classroom changes, leading to improved development of students' oral language and pragmatic skills. It has facilitated culturally sensitive evaluations of communication among bilingual children, cultivating collaboration between teachers and speech therapist to identify areas of growth. Participants in the professional development program demonstrated substantial progress across all dimensions assessed by EVALOE-DSS. This included improved management of pupil communication functions, implementation of effective teaching strategies, and better classroom dynamics. Regular reflection sessions using EVALOE-SSD supported continuous improvement in instructional practices, highlighting its role in fostering reflective teaching and enriching student learning experiences. Overall, EVALOE-DSS has proven invaluable for enhancing teaching effectiveness and promoting meaningful student interactions in diverse educational settings.

Keywords: bilingual students, collaboration, culturally sensitive, oral communication skills, self-reflection

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Authors: Boon Yih Mah

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Web-based Cognitive Writing Instruction (WeCWI)’s contribution towards language development can be divided into linguistic and non-linguistic perspectives. In linguistic perspective, WeCWI focuses on the literacy and language discoveries, while the cognitive and psychological discoveries are the hubs in non-linguistic perspective. In linguistic perspective, WeCWI draws attention to free reading and enterprises, which are supported by the language acquisition theories. Besides, the adoption of process genre approach as a hybrid guided writing approach fosters literacy development. Literacy and language developments are interconnected in the communication process; hence, WeCWI encourages meaningful discussion based on the interactionist theory that involves input, negotiation, output, and interactional feedback. Rooted in the e-learning interaction-based model, WeCWI promotes online discussion via synchronous and asynchronous communications, which allows interactions happened among the learners, instructor, and digital content. In non-linguistic perspective, WeCWI highlights on the contribution of reading, discussion, and writing towards cognitive development. Based on the inquiry models, learners’ critical thinking is fostered during information exploration process through interaction and questioning. Lastly, to lower writing anxiety, WeCWI develops the instructional tool with supportive features to facilitate the writing process. To bring a positive user experience to the learner, WeCWI aims to create the instructional tool with different interface designs based on two different types of perceptual learning style.

Keywords: WeCWI, literacy discovery, language discovery, cognitive discovery, psychological discovery

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Authors: Raghav Lakhotia, Chandra Kanth Nagesh, Krishna Madgula

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A lot has been said and discussed regarding the rationale and significance of the Bechdel Score. It became a digital sensation in 2013, when Swedish cinemas began to showcase the Bechdel test score of a film alongside its rating. The test has drawn criticism from experts and the film fraternity regarding its use to rate the female presence in a movie. The pundits believe that the score is too simplified and the underlying criteria of a film to pass the test must include 1) at least two women, 2) who have at least one dialogue, 3) about something other than a man, is egregious. In this research, we have considered a few more parameters which highlight how we represent females in film, like the number of female dialogues in a movie, dialogue genre, and part of speech tags in the dialogue. The parameters were missing in the existing criteria to calculate the Bechdel score. The research aims to analyze 342 movies scripts to test a hypothesis if these extra parameters, above with the current Bechdel criteria, are significant in calculating the female representation score. The result of the Principal Component Analysis method concludes that the female dialogue content is a key component and should be considered while measuring the representation of women in a work of fiction.

Keywords: Bechdel test, dialogue genre, parts of speech tags, principal component analysis

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Authors: Nizar Ibnus

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The term 'pribumi' or indigenous people was originally coined in the colonisation era to differentiate between Dutch colonials and native Indonesian people. The term was also used to trigger nationalism among Indonesian people to liberate their country from any kind of colonialism which had seized their freedom for ages. However, after the war was over and the colonials had fled from the country, the usage began to be altered. It changed from nationalist propaganda term to somewhat racist term. Immigrants and half-blooded people were massively victimized. Then, in 1998 the government forbade the use of this term for public use. Apparently, this racial issue happens again. On 16th October 2017, Anies Baswedan as the new government of DKI Jakarta province mentioned this term in his inauguration speech. This indeed raises controversy among Indonesian people. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how Indonesian media portray the figure of Anies Baswedan regarding the issue. The findings reveal that Indonesian media depict Anies Baswedan differently. Some view him guilty as he mentioned the controversial and forbidden term in public. While, the other media consider him as innocent as he used the term in different contexts. This various media point of view and framing is presumably emerged from their different ideologies.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, media framing, racism, pribumi

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Authors: Sandhya Baskaran, Hari Kumar Nagabushanam

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Sarcasm sentiment recognition is an area of natural language processing that is being probed into in the recent times. Even with the advancements in NLP, typical translations of words, sentences in its context fail to provide the exact information on a sentiment or emotion of a user. For example, if something bad happens, the statement ‘That's just what I need, great! Terrific!’ is expressed in a sarcastic tone which could be misread as a positive sign by any text-based analyzer. In this paper, we are presenting a unique real time ‘word with its tone’ spotting technique which would provide the sentiment analysis for a tone or pitch of a voice in combination with the words being expressed. This hybrid approach increases the probability for identification of special sentiment like sarcasm much closer to the real world than by mining text or speech individually. The system uses a tone analyzer such as YIN-FFT which extracts pitch segment-wise that would be used in parallel with a speech recognition system. The clustered data is classified for sentiments and sarcasm score for each of it determined. Our Simulations demonstrates the improvement in f-measure of around 12% compared to existing detection techniques with increased precision and recall.

Keywords: sarcasm recognition, tone-word spotting, natural language processing, pitch analyzer

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